Of course, in the time since that pronouncement, we’ve seen “Big Government” show us that big bureaucracies are still just as unwieldy and unresponsive as they ‘ve always been, regardless of attempts to build a myth to claim otherwise.

Or said another way, FEMA’s response to Sandy has not been particularly impressive nor has it at all validated the New York Times editorial claim.

Barry Moline, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association, said Long Island could have received 125 additional workers from utilities across Florida as soon as two days after the storm if a dispute about the letters had been resolved sooner. He said most of the crews from Florida who were available were nonunion and refused to join Local 1049 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, even if only temporarily.

[snip]

Crews that could have come to Long Island went instead to Pennsylvania, Moline said. “We could have been there on Wednesday, and instead we arrived on Sunday,” he said, after the union rescinded the requirement. [Emphasis added.]

But again, the story here is “Big Government” in general and FEMA – Big Government’s representative – in particular. How has FEMA done? Not as well as you’d expect, given the supposed failures of Katrina and the claimed lessons learned from that storm. It appears those lessons are still being learned.

It took days for FEMA to hit the ground in hard-hit parts of NYC. More than a week after the storm, FEMA representatives were just getting on the ground and opening temporary offices in New Jersey. When a nor’easter blew in, several of their offices shut down because of— wait for it— severe weather.

Huh. A week after the storm? Where’s the outcry?

Where are the news crews with weeping reporters telling us how horrible it is for the poor residents of Staten Island and spreading rumors about rape and murder? Nowhere to be seen.

But back to FEMA. FEMA is a bureaucracy, folks. A big bureaucracy. And big bureaucracies are neither responsive nor quick. It’s just a fact of bureaucratic reality. Expecting that to change is, well, simply a denial of reality.

“FEMA hasn’t done anything else. The inspector came out and he inspected the damage and that was it. He said he was going to forward it to his headquarters and I will hear from them, that’s it.” When asked if he has heard from anyone? Daily quickly responded, “No.”

“You have to get a copy from your landlord saying that it was your living space,” Jones said. “If you get denied (from flood insurance), get a letter in writing saying what (your insurance provider) won’t cover. Then submit that letter to FEMA and FEMA can send an inspector to inspect your home.”

Over the weekend, a source (who wishes to remain anonymous) reported that contractors contracted—as well as, generators, water, and other supplies paid for—by FEMA are being idled at New York’s Floyd Bennett Field by “red tape” requirements, while unions deploy their members and many storm victims sit in the dark.

While there are about 4,000 National Guardsmen at Bennett Field, there are hundreds of out-of-state contractors for FEMA, many of them linemen and electricians, that are not being deployed to help turn power pack on for residents because of the red tape.

On Sunday, out of the 400-500 workers available, according to the source, only three crews went out. Crews, he said, are usually two-man teams.

The union crews, the source stated, are free to come and go as they please, yet the non-union FEMA contractors are being held back because of red tape requirements.

The red-tape bottleneck, he said, comes from the Corps of Engineers. They get work orders in (places that need help), but the work orders don’t come out as they should.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the source said over the weekend.

On Sunday night, FEMA contractors put in one generator for a 14-floor building. Just one.

And:

Immediately after the storm, beer maker Budweiser converted its beer lines in Georgia to produce water—44,000 cases of water. That water was trucked into the storm ravaged area, but much of it is still sitting as residents in across Brooklyn and in Far Rockaway, Queens continue to boil their water as of Saturday.

Two weeks. Monday was the 14th day since Hurricane Sandy upended lives on the Eastern Seaboard, the longest two weeks of many people’s lives. Plastic bottles. Warming buses. Charging stations. These are just a few of the signposts in a changed world. Help is coming, the people are told, but some have lost the desire to trust.

“I don’t believe,” said Lioudmila Korableva, 71, a resident of a darkened Coney Island building project filled with older people.

Meanwhile, smaller and more flexible and mostly private organizations have stepped in to try to make a difference.

Yup, a big storm needs a big government doesn’t it?

Sandy again proves the point that such thinking is simply wishful and has no basis in real fact.

Meanwhile the press is on to sex and tittilation. The Obama/Sandy photo op has passed and so has their interest in following up on the disaster, even though the parallels are amazing:

So: late warnings, confused and inadequate responses, FEMA foul-ups and suffering refugees. In this regard, Sandy is looking a lot like Katrina on the Hudson. Well, things go wrong in disasters. That’s why they’re called disasters. But there is one difference.

Under Katrina, the national press credulously reported all sorts of horror stories: rapes, children with slit throats, even cannibalism. These stories were pretty much all false. Worse, as Lou Dolinar cataloged later, the press also ignored many very real stories of heroism and competence. We haven’t seen such one-sided coverage of Sandy, where the press coverage of problems, though somewhat muted before the election, hasn’t been marked by absurd rumors or ham-handed efforts to push a particular narrative.

But hey, pointing that out now would destroy the “big storms require big government” myth, would it? And besides, we all know the election’s over. Screw the victims. The photo op is done. It’s the preservation of the myth that’s important.